In this latest collection of poems, Charles Simic, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, brings us startling new visions of the haunted landscape that has been his oeuvre, where the surreal and the mundane, the sacred and profane, are indistinguishable, a world where "everything is teetering on the edge of everything/With a polite smile." A man waits at a bus stop for the love of his life, a woman (Lady Luck?) he's never met. The world's greatest ventriloquist who sits on a street corner uses passersby as dummies and speaks through us all. Hamlet's ghost walks the hallways of a Vegas motel. Sunlight streams through a windowpane of fire. Mary Magdalene cruises Santa Monica Boulevard. Flies from a slaughterhouse leave bloody tracks across the pages of a book. Jesus panhandles in a weed-infested Eden

Dark Corner -- Mirrors at 4 A.M. -- Relaxing in a Madhouse -- Roach Motel -- Emily's Theme -- Cameo Appearance -- The Friends of Heraclitus -- An Address with Exlamation Points -- Le Dame e i Cavalieri -- Shadow Publishing Company -- Talking to Little Birdies -- The Master of Ceremonies -- My Magician -- Night in the House of Cards -- On the Road to Somewhere Else -- What the Gypsies Told my Grandmother while She Was Still a Young Girl -- Little Unwritten Book -- Winter Evening -- Have You Met Miss Jones? -- On the Sagging Porch -- Dogs Hear It -- Meditation in the Gutter -- Charm School -- Ghosts -- Under New Management -- The Conquering Hero Is Tired

The Story of Happiness -- Theatrical Costumes -- Bed Music -- Marked Playing Cards -- The Road in the Clouds -- Cafe Paradiso -- Blindman's Bluff -- Turn On the Lights -- At the Cookout -- Don't Wake the Cards -- Free the Goldfish -- Pastoral Harpsichord -- Kitchen Helper -- Entertaining the Canary -- The Forest Walk -- Slaughterhouse Flies -- My Darling Premonition -- Blood Orange -- October Light -- First Day of Summer -- The Preacher Says -- Sunset's Coloring Book -- In a Forest of Whispers -- Lone Tree -- Make Yourself Invisible -- Toad's Poolhall -- Pain -- Late Train -- Club Midnight -- Late Call -- Official Inquiry among the Grains of Sand -- The Street Ventriliquist

The Father of Lies -- Against Winter -- Squinting Suspiciously -- The Something -- Collector's Tweezers -- The Great Picnic -- Hot Night -- My Progress on Stilts -- The Emperor -- The Anniversary

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